Do you want your Excel formula to be applied to an entire column in Excel? There’s a few ways you can do this, and this post looks at four of them.
Note: all the methods mentioned below use this formula in cell D2 below as the example of a formula that is being applied to an entire column:
1) Double click on the fill handle
This is probably the quickest way. If you have a formula that you want in all the cells of a column adjacent to a data set, you can just double click on the fill handle, as shown below:
2) Drag the fill handle down
An alternative to double clicking on the fill handle is to drag it down. This isn’t something you want to do if you need the formula in many cells (it’s a bit too slow for that) but it’s still relatively quick. The advantage of dragging the fill handle down is that you get more control over where your formula goes compared to double clicking which will just take you to the end of the range.
3) The fill down keyboard shortcut
Once you have the cells you want the formula to go highlighted, you can just press Ctrl + D (⌘ + D on Mac) to fill it down. If you’re often using keyboard shortcuts in Excel and don’t have your hand on the mouse, you might find this ends up being the quickest option for applying a formula to a column in Excel.
4) The fill down option in the Home tab
If you have the cells highlighted (like above), you can also select Fill -> Down in the Home tab. This method is my least favourite (too slow!), but it’s there if you need it!
